Urbanautica

FRAGILE PEAKS, MEMORIES AND AMBITIONS

by Steve Bisson

We can then look at these images as a catalog of the infrastructure of the world that attests to the spirit of civilization or as an absurd attempt to monumentalize one's time in fear of survival.

The etymology of photography brings together light and writing. Writing with light is such a shining concept. From a technical point of view, it draws back to an "alchemical" era of inventions. As trying to fix memories on a sensitive film. A sort of magic whose strength is even hard to imagine when perpetually immersed in mirrors of images. Today's society breeds us in an amniotic fluid of visual nutrients that organically stimulate our pupils like continuous neural electrical discharges. If so, it makes more sense to think about the definition from a metaphorical perspective; as a means of reproducing the visible and releasing the body of the invisible, its presence.

© Claudia Mann from the series "Within The Mountain"

Claudia Mann's work, (shortlisted Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: People and Communities) emphasizes minorities. An issue that affects much of world geography: from Palestine to the Amazon. Whenever the eyes of the media are distracted, people turn invisible. The pressure of changes and transformations threatens their language, lands, and traditions. These constant conflicts mark history. Claudia Mann takes us to the mountains where the Ladin culture still flourishes, though nowadays challenges its pastoral-alpine lifestyle. She claims: "Drawing upon centennial traditions imbued with a spirit of interdependency and adaptability, Ladin people are the force behind one of the most marvelous mountain ranges anywhere, and remain till this day an essential presence for the life of the mountain and its biodiversity." So Claudia's images are undoubtedly proofs and documentation. Memory for the future, if we like. But also and above all it invites us to discover that culture is made up of words and therefore "practices of existence." In the Ladins' case, we speak of existence built on a stable relationship with nature. So here we understand the importance of photography in the present. There couldn't be a tomorrow if we close our shutters today. Like the hay harvest, essential Ladin tradition is all projected towards winter, towards the near future. As a "reserve of present". As long as we are interested in tomorrow, looking at modern civilization, some doubts may arise.

© Claudia Mann from the series "Within The Mountain"

© Claudia Mann from the series "Within The Mountain"

"Re" is a suffix widely used in the vocabulary. It has to do with the dimension of possibility in some ways. Starting over, repairing, reiterating, and re-starting are a few examples showing a "chance" for tomorrow. It is no coincidence that the eclectic German artist Gisela Weiman titles her work created as part of the artist's residence "Ri-abitare con l'Arte" with "In the time of re..." Coordinated and curated by Silvia di Gregorio and Allison DeLauer with the kind support of the residents of the village of San Pandifo d'Ocre. The work presents both "Re-connaissance and Re-cognition" of value in artistic craftsmanship as a possibility for local attunement. And this makes even more sense considering we are among places heavily hitten by the 2009 earthquake and where certainties still tremble. Here the suffix "re" has a fatal meaning. Gisela Weiman (special mention Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: Nature, Environment and Perspectives) establishes a dialogue with the artist Angelo Riocci as she explains: "In his workshop we succeeded in combining battered bowls, broken vases and painted plates with natural elements such as boulders, gnarled roots and other recycled fragments to create memorabilia and new everyday objects The shards and stones for this are so abundant in the region that even a future design line could be developed with them." This work is a tribute to a marginal Italy of small invisible villages, which are struggling to find a solid and resistant identity, sometimes put to the test by the "bad mood" of the earth that loses ground control. Gisela's creative exchange generates and enhances a vision of possibilities, a new start, a re-start. A photo shows an inscription on a crumbling house: "I am." In that being there, in that present that becomes re-action, Gisela Weiman again shows us the ethical posture of arts when it booths empathy, solidarity, and participation.

© Gisela Weiman from the series "In the time of re...

Claire Power (special mention Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: Anthropology and Territories) with the "Mountain" series leads us to think about these "peak territories" on a symbolic level. The mountain, in its majesty, masks challenges, pitfalls, and power but also protection, nature, defense, and resilience for its people. It is also a chance for those who dare to observe the world from above and look beyond. Vesuvius is a singular mountain because it holds in its bowels a severe threat to the inhabitants who live in its presence. And this generates a mystery relationship expressed through rites, words, exorcisms, prayers, and a "survival glossary." Claire's report brings out all this: "It follows the traces of an ancient agricultural history which is transmitted through the christo-pagan rituals, through the blood and the gestures, through the relationship between beings and land." A collection of images as a "dictionary of superstition" in which organic matter mixes with esoteric thoughts in a local-mythological potion. And yet everything speaks to us of an authentic relationship with the world, spoiled by bad weather and beliefs, and speaks to us of a time when they still feared the gods. The invisible indeed.

Fabio D'Arsié (Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021 - category: Nature, Environment and Perspectives) reverses the projection and catapults us into a concrete and laic dymension. We are in the Cadore, a mountainous area known for "the gigantic landslide that broke away from Mount Toc that invaded Lake Vajont and caused the destruction of Longarone and other neighboring countries", remind us the author. Thousands of lives were swept away with their homes, hopes, dreams, and expectations by a frightening shock wave, a "mountain of water" rained down from the Vajont gorge. The photographs collected in the "Imprisoned Waters and Fragile Mountains" series remind us that we are in a highly exploited region for hydroelectric energy production. Human intervention was dramatically invasive and produced an artificial landscape of dams, penstocks, underground tunnels, turbines, and gigantic reservoirs that hold back force and manipulate the water for the "sake of progress." These pictures are as many faces of a great modernist dogma, a religious creed that wants to impose and constantly shape the forces of nature. And yet the Vajont is there, still standing today, like a "great wall reminder" of the fragility of human convictions. We can then look at these images as a catalog of the infrastructure of the world that attests to the spirit of civilization or as an absurd attempt to monumentalize one's time in fear of survival.

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Our Annual Institute Awards Contest is always an opportunity to collect addresses, ideas, perspectives, arguments, criticisms, awareness, and possibilities.

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